Hi,

How can I keep in touch with you? I am hitting a wall and could use someone to speak to. I’d like to forward an email to you with an issue that I am experiencing with a company that is offering courses in data analysis, an important step in becoming a data scientist. Thanks, Anna

Glad to help, and thanks for the positive feedback! Maybe we’ll meet up at an event someday – you’re only 2 hrs north-east of me! :)

Great, glad to be learning together, and thanks for the note! :)

Hi Anna!

Thanks for introducing yourself! Do you think you’re going to apply to a data science graduate program? Few schools had data science degrees when I started my master’s program, but many have started in the past few years, so there are a lot of options at various schools, including online programs. You could also “test the waters” with some online courses first to see if it’s for you.

I don’t think it’s ever too late to get into this field. I’m 33 years old and just now getting my master’s degree, and just started really exploring data science a little over a year ago. I was like you in that the more I read about data science, the more I knew it was the next step in my career path! I had a technical undergrad degree, which did give me a “head start” with a few beginner programming and database classes, but my major was very “generalist” focused, so I felt behind the people that had CS or physics degrees when I first started looking at data science and learning on my own. However, I have now realized that there is such a need for people in this field, and so many resources available, I would recommend for anyone with a strong interest to go ahead and try it out! The skills are transferable to many different areas, so they’re all good to learn no matter where you end up, and you might find out you’re really good at it!

As an English major, you may want to take some math and programming courses before applying to graduate programs. I had to take Linear Algebra (I took it at Blue Ridge Community College online) before I was even eligible to apply for my masters in Systems Engineering program, and I took an accelerated course that summer and applied for the fall semester at UVA. I would assume most data science programs would require basic programming and statistics as prerequisites, so you may want to get college credits in those areas if you don’t already have them.

I’m happy you can join me in this learning path and would love to stay in touch!

Renee

Thanks for the Girl Develop It Google Hangouts on Air Meetup! So I’m checking out your website for resources.

I just want to introduce myself. A couple of years ago, I was researching potential grad school programs and careers online, and I first heard about the term Data Scientist. As I learned more about it, I was like, that’s so me. That’s exactly what I want to do. So I am a couple of years behind. Is it ever too late? I’ve been too busy musing about this :-)

Not sure how I can get started. I am already on codecademy – I guess I should start with Python. It’s hard enough to keep up with programming languages, and I was this close to start elsewhere, but recently it’s dawned on me that Python is the way to go and that is the programming language I should learn next.

For fun, I have been taking Ruby on Rails courses and thought it was really fun, so I’ve been trying to develop a bit more skill in Ruby on Rails. I have a class on Ruby on Rails tomorrow night. A new project. I run Linux on my computer. Computers have been my passion since about 1995. Unfortunately, I was an English major in college. I should have majored in Computer Information Systems in college instead. But I didn’t want to do computers, or so I thought.

Anyway, if you want to chat, you can email me :-)

Thanks,
Anna